add to del.icio.us			digg this		print		email

Floor Statement: Energy Policy Debate

Energy Policy Debate - Wednesday, July 23, 2008 View video | Can't view the video?

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee for his good words and his good work on this important issue. It is a serious problem. It's a serious problem. And it calls for serious answers and response by the United States Senate. And I agree with him that we frankly need to do, when it comes to energy, when it comes to reducing our depend answer on imported oil -- as T. Boone Pickens pointed out in the crusade to make sure that people understand where we are on this, he said we send $700 billion of American money to foreign countries to pay for the oil that we import because we're in the producing enough here at home, because we're not conserving and because we are not far enough down the road in terms of coming up with alternative sources of energy.

So what is Congress' role in all this? We have done some things and I think we ought to give credit where credit is due. We passed a corporate fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. We've put tax benefits and subsidies for things like solar power, wind energy. We've done things like encourage production of biofuels like ethanol -- although we are finding, sometimes that the unintended consequences of using food for fuel create problems in and of themselves. But suffice it to say that this is a serious problem and Congress has, in many respects, acted, I think, appropriately, to try to address some parts of the problem. But unfortunately this, like so much of politics these days, sometimes degrades into a name-calling contest. I'm going to try my best not to engage if that but I want to respond to the accusation made earlier somehow this is attributable to the current administration's tenure in office - as you can see from this chart the price of gasoline back when President Bush was sworn into office on January 2001 was $1.49 a gallon. And it has grown over time to when Democrats took control of the Congress in January 2007 to $2.33 a gallon. And then, of course, it has spiked since that time to now, I think, on the order of $4.06 on average, more than $4 a gallon. So it has gone from January 2007 to today to more than $4 a gallon while our friends who are in charge of the agenda and the floor schedule of the United States Congress, the Democrats, who were put in the majority status, have been here we have seen it spike to the figures that it is in today.

Now that's not to say that it is directly attributable to them but I would say it is unfair to suggest that just because President Bush has been in office since January 2001 he is the only one responsible. The fact of the matter is it is our responsibility, too. And it's the Majority Leader's responsibility, I would submit, to give us an opportunity to come up with serious answers to a serious problem and not play the same old broken game of politics and "gotcha" that turn people off so much when it comes to the United States Congress. It is not secret why the approval rating of the United States Congress is at historic lows. There is no secret to that. It's because people look at what's happening here in Washington, DC and they say - 'they're not listening'. Or, they may be listening but they're playing political games rather than trying to solve real problems on a bipartisan basis. Now, I know there are plenty of fault to go and but why can't we work together to try to solve the most pressing issue for working families in America today and that is the cost of high gasoline and high energy.

Well, we know that there is a bill on the floor that deals with one part of the problem. This has to do with the so-called speculation angle. Well, just last month, Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in America, perhaps the richest in the world, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway said "it's not speculation that's the problem, it's supply and demand." T. Boone Pickens who I mentioned a moment ago who is spending $50 million of his own money -- he met with Republicans today; he met with Democrats yesterday -- to explain why he is spending so much of his own money to elevate the profile of this issue so it will be something that Congress can't run away from and neither can the Presidential candidates but something we'll actually have to address and solve. He said, focusing solely on speculation is a waste of time. So why would Congress deal with a bill that only addresses speculation? Now, I would say, I'm not sure, so what I'm willing to do is certainly consider and probably support a bill that would be supported on the Democrat side a that would provide for greater transparency, in the commodities futures markets and would provide more resources to make sure we have more cops on the beat, so to speak, to police the commodities futures trading that goes on and to make sure that's not the problem. Or if it is part of the problem, as the Majority Leader said yesterday, he stood here on the floor of the United States Senate and said he thought it was 20% of the problem in terms of the price of oil. Well, I don't know if T. Boone Pickens is right; I don't know if Warren Buffet is right; I don't know whether the Majority Leader is right. Let's say the Majority Leader is right and it's 20% of the problem, why in the world would we leave the other 80% off the table? Why would we settle for a 20% solution when we can have a 100% solution in trying to address this important domestic issue?

Now, we've come up with a lot of ideas. We've said well, we need to explore and produce more American oil so we have to buy less from overseas and we have been told, no, we can't do that. We've been told that, no, we can't produce more nuclear power to help generate more electricity. No, we can't investigate the possibility that we could use the coal we have here for new technology to that would allow us to use that coal to make aviation fuel as the US Air Force is currently testing, a synthetic fuel made from coal-to-liquids technology. Well, again, I think it seems like -- and I don't think this is unfair; I think this is just exactly what we keep hearing -- the answer from the other side of the aisle is "no new energy." They want to investigate. They want to litigate. They want to raise taxes but when it comes to new energy, new energy sources, they say no. And the one law that Congress, of course, cannot repeal or success spend even here in Washington, DC , is the law of supply and demand.

And we know from the experts that rising demand in countries like China and India -- more than a billion people each. They are consuming more energy. They have watched us and they have seen that America consumes about 25% of the oil in the world even though we represent a small fraction of the population. And they look at that and they say, maybe that's the reason for their great prosperity and you know what? I think there is something to that so we have more and more competition globally for this scarce commodity. So what is our answer on this side of the aisle? We say we need to find more and we need to use less. Find more and use less. Now I heard the Senator from Tennessee bemoan the fact that the Majority Leader has said he will not allow full debate and amendments. I think it is critical we allow full debate and amendments that would be likely to actually solve the problem rather than go through what is a patently political exercise so that somebody or another can check off the box and say, okay, we have been there, done that. Now we can go home on August recess. I believe we ought to stay here rather than go on recess in August. We ought to stay here until we have actually come up with a commonsense solution to the problem.

Some say, okay, if we start producing more oil today or we start drilling today on the outer continental shelf it's going to take years for that oil to come online. Well, I wish we had thought better about that 10 years ago when President Clinton vetoed production from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge which Congress had authorized which would have produced a million additional barrels 10 years ago that would be flowing today if President Clinton had not vetoed that bill. And the fact of the matter is, oil is a globally traded commodity. That is where we get back to the speculation question. And actually the market is a pretty rational process. For everybody selling a contract for future delivery of oil, somebody is actually willing to buy it - that is how the market works. If Congress were to do the rational thing, the sensible thing, the thing that would actually have a positive impact by pushing gas prices downward, we would say we are open to producing more American energy, perhaps as many as three million additional barrels of oil a day here in America which is three million barrels less we have to purchase from abroad.

And that would give us some time. It would also send a message to the commodities futures markets that in the future there's going to be additional supply that's going to come online. That would help bring down the price of oil of which 70% of the price of gasoline is related to the price of oil. And I think that would have a dramatic impact on the price of gasoline at the pump and would provide the American people some relief at a time they need some financial relief. And it would give us some time so we can do the research and use good old-fashioned American ingenuity to come up with alternatives. Things like in 2010 where many of the big automobile companies are going to introduce plug-in hybrid automobiles that you can actually plug into the wall socket in your home and charge the battery that you can use then to commute to work. Or if you believe what T. Boone Pickens has suggested he said we could use, if government would mandate that all new government cars and trucks would run on natural gas, that would relieve a lot of the pressure on gasoline and oil prices and bring down the price of gasoline by 38%.

Senator Durbin: Would the Senator yield for a question?

Senator Cornyn: I am happy to yield.

Senator Durbin: Senator Cornyn, you probably heard, as I did, when President Bush said America is addicted to oil. I took that to mean that we had to try to find a way to move to alternatives and renewable and sustainable energy and I hear your speech moving in that direction, as well. So can you tell me why you believe that 68 million Federal acres of land which we have now given to the oil and gas companies which they are not using for exploration and production is an argument forgiving them more acreage?

Senator Cornyn: Madam President, I appreciate the question and the opportunity to answer that. Oil and gas -- I think there is the illusion in Washington that every acre of lands available for exploration will produce oil. As a matter of fact, in Texas, I'm not unfamiliar with the term "dry hole." Matter of fact, this is a very complex enterprise where you do seismic testing try to figure out where oil is likely to be but sometimes you're wrong and it costs millions, even sometimes billions of dollars to invest to try to produce that oil so what the oil companies try to do is figure out where their chances are best so they start there. But the more land, including the submerged lands in the outer continental shelf that is available to them that now Congress has put out of bounds, I think the better chances are that they will be able to find it. As a matter of fact, there are experts -- I'm not an expert but I read what the experts say -- but they believe there are vast quantities of oil and gas available on the outer continental shelf that are not available now on the lands they have access to.

Senator Durbin: Would the Senator yield for another question?

Senator Cornyn: I would be happy to.

Senator Durbin: If you were given the opportunity to lease a barrel of rain water or a lake to go fishing I assume would you lease the lake and I ausume that these oil and gas companies who lease this land believe the land is likely to have oil and gas so if they have paid their money to lease Federal land, 68 million acres, half of it onshore, half of it offshore -- and another 23 million acres in Alaska, where is this motherlode of oil that you are so certain we are holding back from the oil and gas companies that would bring us the oil instantaneously and bring down gas prices?

Senator Cornyn: I think the Senator's question demonstrates and I am not complaining or criticizing, we're not oil and gas experts but I have had a little bit of exposure let me try to answer that. There's not a big lake of oil under the surface of the land that's available to anybody who can punch a hole in the earth and then suck it out with a straw, so I don't really think the analogy is apt. These oil companies are, they -- they're owned in America, owned by shareholders. They're not interested in drilling dry holes. They're interested in drilling where there's actually going to be some oil that can be produced and the more opportunity they have, the more lands available to them, the greater, they believe, and I believe, that they can maximize the likelihood that they'll actually find oil. This isn't to help the oil companies. This is to help us quit sending $700 billion a year of American dollars to foreign countries for oil. We have more of it here at home, if you believe the experts about, 3 million barrels a day.